The Purdue Historian Volume 7 Purdue Historian 2014 Article 2 2014 Impartiality Reconsidered: Al Jazeera and Jessica Lynch Ashley M. Sankari Purdue University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/puhistorian Part of the American Popular Culture Commons, and the Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Sankari, Ashley M.. "Impartiality Reconsidered: Al Jazeera and Jessica Lynch." The Purdue Historian 7, 1 (2014). http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/puhistorian/vol7/iss1/2 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Sankari: Impartiality Reconsidered: Al Jazeera and Jessica Lynch In June 2004, then National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, addressed rumors that President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair had discussed attacking the headquarters of the Al Jazeera network in Qatar. Speaking to members of the press, Secretary Rice stated, "I don't think anybody has suggested the shutting down of Al Jazeera. I do think people have suggested that it would be a good thing if the reporting were accurate on Al Jazeera, and if it were not slanted in ways that appears to be, at times, just purely inaccurate. And so that's been the issue with Al Jazeera." 1 In this way, Rice expressed a criticism common among American government officials at the time, and one that filtered down to the American public. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and the subsequent 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Al Jazeera broadcasted videos of Osama Bin Laden and other high ranking leaders of the Taliban. U.S officials criticized its willingness to publish these videos and considered their publication to be anti-American propaganda. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld remarked, "We know that Aljazeera has a pattern of playing Taliban propaganda over, and over, and over again. And they have a pattern of not making judgments about the accuracy of the propaganda.” 2 While Al Jazeera’s coverage of the United States’ wars in the Middle East was certainly controversial, the American accusations of propaganda were unfounded. Indeed, it will be argued in this essay that Al Jazeera’s reporting was more accurate and reliable than American media outlets during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. U.S media coverage of the Iraq invasion served to propagate many of the ultimately wholly misinformed claims and accusations made by members of the George W. Bush Administration. The misconceptions regarding Al-Qaeda’s involvement in Iraq as well as the questionable legality of the war disseminated by the American media fueled pro-war sentiments throughout the American public. A poll conducted by the 1 “An Uneasy Relationship,” Al Jazeera English , November 23, 2005, http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2005/11/20 08410133132573373.html. 2 Ibid. 1 Published by Purdue e-Pubs, 2014 1 The Purdue Historian, Vol. 7 [2014], Art. 2 Program on International Policy in October 2003 revealed that 60% of respondents believed at least one of the following misconceptions: that weapons of mass destruction had been discovered in Iraq, that a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq had been found, and that global public opinion favored intervention in Iraq. 3 In this essay, I use Private Jessica Lynch’s capture to both examine and demonstrate the impartial and critical nature of Al Jazeera’s reporting. On March 23, 2003, the United States Army convoy of the 507 th Ordinance Maintenance Company, in which 19-year-old Private Jessica Lynch was assigned, took a wrong turn and found itself driving through downtown Nasiriyah, a Saddam loyalist city in Southeastern Iraq. Militants ambushed the disoriented convoy with small arms and rocket fire. One rocket propelled grenade, launched by Iraqi soldiers, slammed into Lynch’s Humvee, causing it to crash. The attack left three passengers dead and Lynch seriously wounded. Lynch was later rescued from an Iraqi military hospital by an elite team of U.S Marines and Navy Seals. As will be shown below, a barrage of inaccurate reporting by U.S media regarding tales of heroic feats on the part of Lynch quickly followed her rescue. In contrast to the exaggerated and dubious American media renditions that included a questionably contrived Washington Post article, as well as a dramatized videotape of the rescue circulated by the US Department of Defense, analysis of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the capture of Private Jessica Lynch reveals accurate and well researched reports that illuminate the bias and misrepresentation of many American media outlets. 3 Steven Kull, “Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War,” World Public Opinion , October 2, 2003, http://www. worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_ rpt.pdf. 2 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/puhistorian/vol7/iss1/2 2 Sankari: Impartiality Reconsidered: Al Jazeera and Jessica Lynch A Historic Commitment to Impartial Reporting Founded in 1995, Al Jazeera has quickly become the largest and most influential Arab news channel in the Middle East. The Arab branch of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) had previously dominated the area; however, after publishing an investigation into human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, its Saudi funding dissolved and the news corporation disbanded.4 Sheikh Hamad of Qatar, disappointed by this attack on freedom of the press, provided a loan to support the founding of Al Jazeera and promised producers and correspondents their right to "report the news as they see it, [for] I believe criticism can be a good thing, and some discomfort for government officials is a small price to pay for this new freedom.” 5 This statement reveals the founding principle of the news station, which is a commitment to fair and accurate reporting. Al Jazeera has been censored and banned at various times in several Arab countries because of its dedication to presenting complete and balanced stories from all sides, even if that means criticizing powerful government regimes. For example, on January 27, 1999, Al Jazeera broadcasted interviews that reporters had conducted with anti-government Algerian dissidents. At the time, the Algerian government had recently experienced a military coup purportedly aimed at ending an eight-year long civil war between the government and several armed insurgency groups. Accusations of state-condoned massacres and targeted killings prompted Algerian officials to cut power to several large cities to prevent access to Al Jazeera’s coverage. 4 “Al Jazeera TV: The History of the Controversial Middle East News Station,” Allied Media Corp, November 7, 2013, http://www.allied-media.com/aljazeerahistory.html. 5 Vivien Morgan, Practising Video journalism (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2007); “The Geneva Conventions,” PBS , May 11, 2008, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/exclusive-to-al-jazeera/the-geneva-conventions/ the-geneva-conventions-the-controversial-footage/616/. 3 Published by Purdue e-Pubs, 2014 3 The Purdue Historian, Vol. 7 [2014], Art. 2 The new government of Algeria did not want Al Jazeera broadcasts to stir up unrest and protest while it still held its fledgling leadership. 6 Al Jazeera demonstrated time and again that it would not hesitate to criticize the powerful and autocratic governments of the Middle East. For example, on June 4, 1999, Al Jazeera broadcasted a controversial interview with a Kuwaiti citizen living abroad in Norway. The emigrant interviewed expressed his criticism of the Kuwaiti regime, particularly the Emir, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, for Kuwait’s support of the United States during the Gulf War. In response, Kuwait’s Minister of Information shut down the Al Jazeera office in the country and forbid Al Jazeera from performing any activity in Kuwait. He chastised Al Jazeera for attacking the integrity of the country, and for failing to appropriately censor the interview. 7 Similarly, Al Jazeera ran footage of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s sixty-third birthday party in April 2000. Al Jazeera journalists juxtaposed videos of starving young Iraqis alongside the broadcast of the decadent and lavish party thrown by Saddam. While Iraqi officials did not ban Al Jazeera at the time, they lambasted the channel for misrepresenting the Iraqi government and attempting to cater to a pro-American agenda.8 The establishment of the Israeli state in 1948 and her subsequent victories over Arab coalition attacks in the 1948 and 1967 Wars, have long since fostered strong sensitivities toward Israel in the Arab world. For the sake of fair and accurate reporting, Al Jazeera has not shied away from addressing these sensitive issues. The network faced a particularly harsh backlash in 1996 when an Al Jazeera reporter interviewed Hebrew-speaking Israelis for a piece regarding the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This interview was the first time that an Arabic news 6 Anthony Maalouf, The Influence of Al-Jazeera in the Arab World & the Response of Arab Governments (Villanova, PA: Villanova University, 2008). 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 4 http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/puhistorian/vol7/iss1/2 4 Sankari: Impartiality Reconsidered: Al Jazeera and Jessica Lynch channel had Hebrew-speaking Israelis on air. Many Arab countries, embittered by the continued existence of Israel and the plight of Palestinian refugees, saw the piece as inherently biased towards Israel. The fair reporting given by Al Jazeera on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulted in Arab regimes accusing Al Jazeera of being pro-Zionist, or part of some broad Israeli conspiracy. Dedicated to fighting censorship and portraying the whole story, Al Jazeera has ruffled many feathers in the Arab world, but its newsroom personnel have routinely defended the network’s duty to present all of the news, regardless of external pressures. Thus, it is not only the government of the United States that criticizes the Arab news channel.